A Groom With a View

Jane and Shelley nodded, but said nothing.

“It's so stupid! Nobody could have believed it. Dwayne? In love with that box of rocks? Errol, you know that's not true, don't you?”

Errol shook his head. 'I don't know. I've never understood Dwayne. I don't know what made him tick.'

“You didn't get along with your brother?' Jane asked softly.

“It wasn't a matter of getting along so much,' Errol said. 'I just always felt he was thinking circles around me. He always had schemes and plans and secret stuff going on. Sometimes he'd tell me about them when we were younger and he'd be so proud of how clever he was. But I never even got what he was talking about. It was like, I dunno, circles inside circles stuff. Real complicated. Trying to second-guess everybody.'

“Are you saying this bizarre story Kitty is telling is true?' Marguerite said. 'And that Livvy was even remotely inclined to kill someone?”

Errol blushed furiously. 'No, no! Not at all. I'm just saying it's possible Dwayne was plotting something weird. He usually was. That doesn't make Livvy guilty of anything. She's more like me, I think. She just wants to get along in life, do her job, be happy, and not get into fights with anyone.'

“What did Livvy say about Kitty's version of what happened?'

“That Dwayne didn't even remember who Kitty was when Livvy mentioned her as a bridesmaid.'

“Do you think that's true?' Shelley asked. 'I mean, that Dwayne didn't remember her? Kitty told us that she'd had a date with Dwayne and introduced him to Livvy”

Errol shrugged. 'I dunno. Dwayne probably had one date with dozens of women he forgot by the next day. Right now you could tell me Dwayne said he was a secret agent and I wouldn't know whether it was true or not.' He turned to Marguerite. 'You must think I'm an awful person, not knowing anything about my brother. You and your sister are so close.”

Jane interrupted whatever answer Marguerite might have given. 'Errol, I have a sister who is just as much of a mystery to me. I've never been able to get the hang of why she does the things she does. Sometimes it's just that way. It's no reflection on you.”

Jane and Shelley made their departure. 'Errol, we'll be upstairs if anybody needs us. Get yourself something to eat,' Jane said.

They slipped quietly into Livvy's room, searched as thoroughly as they could without messing anything up, but found nothing. Moving on to Mrs. Crossthwait's room, it was the samestory. It was just as they'd left it when they'd packed up her things and loaded them into her car.

“We might as well try the attic while we're up here,' Jane said.

“I'd rather eat,' Shelley grumbled, but obediently followed along.

The door was still unlocked from the last time they'd been up there. It was getting dark, however, and Jane tripped over the small rug lying just inside the room. She caught herself from falling and found a kerosene lamp to light. Holding it high, they both gazed around the room, which looked much more ominous and crowded at night.

“Look! There it is!' Jane exclaimed, crawling over a box of petrified fishing reels.

She hauled out the small suitcase and set the lamp on the floor. Shelley helped clear a free space in the middle of the room and they sat down to examine the contents. There were a couple sweaters sandwiching a scrapbook.

Sloppily etched on the cover in gold ink was the name Dwayne Hessling.

Jane shivered. 'I already don't like this.”

“It is creepy,' Shelley said.

They flipped the first few pages quickly, then went back and studied them more carefully. Every page featured Dwayne. Pictures cut from school yearbooks, high school newsletters. A newspaper clipping about Dwayne being part of an amateur baseball team.

Other pictures showed him walking along the street (Captioned: Dwayne on his way to work). Lounging on a beach someplace. Waving to someone off to his left from a boat (A party in Evanston). Getting into his car (Dwayne leaving my apartment). Shoveling snow off a driveway with a couple other young men. Opening the door of a shop.

Shelley was frowning. 'These last shots are all weird somehow. What is it about them?'

“None of these pictures are posed,' Jane said, staring at Shelley. 'He isn't looking into the camera in any of them.”

Shelley nodded solemnly. 'He didn't know they were being taken.”

They huddled a little closer and looked at the third to the last page. It was a photo of Dwayne and Kitty standing next to each other. But the backgrounds didn't match. It was a composite of two pictures that had been cut and carefully fitted together.

It was captioned, Dwayne and me on our first date.

The second to last page had a marriage license application form. Kitty's part had been filled out and signed by her. Dwayne's part was also completed, but his signature was in the same ink and handwriting as Kitty's.

And on the last page, a cigarette butt had been glued to the page. The caption read, The cigarette Dwayne smoked after the first time we made love.

Shelley shuddered. 'That's revolting.'Jane frowned. 'And it's not true.'

“How on earth would you know?' Shelley asked, laughing nervously.

“Because one of the few times Livvy and I had a planning meeting, I asked her about smoking. Whether I should have ashtrays out at the lodge. She said it didn't matter, even though neither of them smoked, and went on to say that Dwayne was about the only person she'd ever known who'd never even tried smoking because he'd made some kind of deathbed promise to his grandfather.'

“But Dwayne was a con man. I wouldn't believe anything he said.'

“You're right about that. But Shelley, look at this book. It's sick. It's something like demented fans of famous people put together and then go shoot their idols. She followed him around, taking pictures of him when he didn't know it. All these pictures were taken where there were several or many other people around and he wouldn't notice her lurking in the area with a camera.'

“She was stalking him,' Shelley said. 'She made up the whole fantasy and convinced herself it was true. Until she actually saw and heard him marry Livvy. The fantasy dissolved, if only for the moment it took to stab him. And…! And that's why she trashed Dwayne's room. The fantasy was under severe duress. It was crumbling. It was her warning to him.'

“We have to take this to Mel,' Jane said.

“In a second. Jane, how could this have anything to do with Mrs. Crossthwait? Surely there aren't two people here who are as flat-out insane as Kitty. What possible reason would she have invented for killing the seamstress?'

“It wasn't invented,' Kitty said from the doorway. 'She knew I was pregnant.”

Jane's heart leaped into her throat. She and Shelley had been sitting with their backs to the door. They both turned quickly. Now Kitty was standing on the little rag rug, holding a shotgun pointed at them.

“You couldn't be pregnant,' Jane blurted out. Shelley pinched her arm. Hard.

Shelley spoke soothingly. 'Where did you get that gun, Kitty?'

“Right here by the door. You were so busy saying wicked things about me that you didn't hear me come in.'

“It's not loaded, you know. Hunters don't put their guns away loaded,' Shelley said.

“Maybe so. Maybe not,' Kitty said, smiling. 'You don't know that and neither do I. But we'll soon find out. You interfering bitches! I've been listening to you and you're wrong. And you're evil.'

“No, Kitty, we're not evil, and neither are you. You're just… confused. You need help and we want to help you,' Jane said.

The door behind Kitty seemed to have a shadow that was moving.

“You don't want to help me. Nobody wants tohelp me. And nobody can. Dwayne's dead. Livvy killed him. And everybody's blaming me.”

The shadow resolved itself into the shape of Errol Hessling. He put his finger to his lips, then made a yak-yak motion to keep her talking.

“That's just because they don't understand,' Jane babbled, tearing her eyes away from Errol. 'You can